Posted on 12/06/2010 1:36:58 PM PST by decimon
LONDON (Reuters) – Maybe being a serf or a villein in the Middle Ages was not such a grim existence as it seems.
Medieval England was not only far more prosperous than previously believed, it also actually boasted an average income that would be more than double the average per capita income of the world's poorest nations today, according to new research.
Living standards in medieval England were far above the "bare bones subsistence" experience of people in many of today's poor countries, a study says.
"The majority of the British population in medieval times could afford to consume what we call a 'respectability basket' of consumer goods that allowed for occasional luxuries," said University of Warwick economist Professor Stephen Broadberry, who led the research.
"By the late Middle Ages, the English people were in a position to afford a varied diet including meat, dairy produce and ale, as well as the less highly processed grain products that comprised the bulk of the bare bones subsistence diet," he added.
He said a figure of $400 annually (as expressed in 1990 international dollars) is commonly is used as a measure of bare bones subsistence and was previously believed to be the average income in England in the Middle Ages.
But the researchers found that English per capita incomes in the late Middle Ages were actually of the order of $1,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
“Shut that bloody bazouki off!”
/bingo!
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According to my Aunt there was a lot of swelling at the Church Door type of thing going on also. It seems that there was a lot of Merry or Marry in the West Country in those days.
I think that it would be easier to visualize life in Medieval England if you imagined the population transported to Jamestowne, VA which was founded in 1607, after all, by members of the same population indigenous to Merrie Olde England. The Jamestowne Company included tradesmen (perfumers, glassmakers, etc.) and "gentlemen" who didn't seem to know much about anything. They brought body armor and other implements of war which quickly found themselves cast to the bottom of cisterns and wells because this equipment was impossible to use and not needed in frontier Virginia.
But, these Englishmen, although nearly perishing the first winter, were resourceful and within a few years had built a thriving colony from scratch. Women joined them (I forget now whether it was the 2nd or the 3rd crossing) and soon the huts were transformed into real homes. They built churches and factories, held the first Thanksgiving long before the Mass. Pilgrims had left Holland, and bore sons and daughters who became our Founders. They were wealthy beyond compare to anything stodgy old Europe and England produced.
It is important to point out that they nearly starved to death when they operated on a communal basis -- sharing everything. It was not until they divided the land and granted the means of production to INDIVIDUAL families that the colony prospered. This seems to be a lesson that some Congresscritters, as well as the White House, have forgotten, or never learned in school.
More than that, England was an important center of the sheep industry. Wool was the key textile in cool and wet northern Europe. The importance of English wool is symbolized by the Woolsack on which the officer presiding over the House of Lords sits. Eventually this lead to the establishment of a prosperous domestic textile industry rather than exporting most of the wool to the Continent.
My Family was in the Staple and lived on Kings Land, Paid A Quit Rent in Money. Some can be verified but they probably treated their underlings badly.
And those pouring out their chamber pots from their upper stories onto the streets below called “gardy loo” (thought to be a mis-quote of the French “Regardez vous”, or “look out”. All that lousy sanitation brought on the great plague of 1665, and the remedy was when London burned down in 1666, the great fire. I’ve always wondered if that is why the Brits refer to the toilet as “the loo”???
I imagine like any human endeavor the people on top lived well and their laborers were worked hard. :-))
Standards I doubt any of us would wish to experience. I hear the internet was really slow back then.
Chaucer’s England would be a nice place to live, as long as one had a supply of antibiotics, good toothpaste, plenty of room deodorizers, flea spray, rat poison, a couple of good airtight (or at least Franklin) stoves, a coal powered refrigerator, proper firarms and plenty of ammunition....
"Well, obviously it's not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products."
Surprisingly, the Black Death in 1348 destroyed that system. With up to a third of the population wiped out, laborers became extremely valuable. Wages and opportunities rose and serfdom was pretty much done in Western Europe.
Originally, a masterpiece was a piece that a journeyman craftsman produced to convince the guild to promote him to master craftsman.
Most families had neither ovens, nor nor any of the bowls, pans and other hardware needed to produce bread. So those who did have such things, usually produced more than they needed, and sold, or exchanged, the excess.
Only (in England)it wasn't the Lord of the manor, but the Lady, or the Squire's, or most prosperous local farmer's, wife. By custom and tradition, if not the letter of the law, the profits the Lady made baking bread, or brewing beer, for her neighbors who did not have the capital to bake and brew for themselves, were hers to dispose of as she pleased, and not controlled by her husband.
Lady — loaf kneader
Lord — loaf ward
yup.
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